From the jungles of New Guinea to the plains of Tanzania, one man’s lifelong quest to see the world’s rarest birds became a journey through the heart of our planet’s wild places. As a pioneer of ecotourism, he led travelers across continents long before GPS and guidebooks, facing snakes in the Amazon, lions in camp, and more than a few brushes with danger—all in pursuit of wonder.
BOOK SAMPLE: Flip through the Preface & Chapter 1.
My Wild Life: Rare Birds, Close Calls, and the Adventures of an Eco-Explorer
Rating is 5.0 out of five stars based on 3 reviews
$25.99Price
My Wild Life by Peter Alden can be shipped to an address in the U.S (3-5 business days) or picked up in Concord MA at Peter Alden's residence by sending an email. These options can be selected on the checkout page prior to payment.
Reviews
To be honest, many nature books are relatively generic; anyone with decent penmanship and a little research effort probably could produce them. Not so Peter Alden’s recently published My Wild Life: Rare-Birds, Close Calls, and Adventures of an Eco-Explorer: A Memoir. This is a highly personal Baedeker, bursting with accounts of worldwide experiences that are anything but generic. This is fitting for Peter’s memoir, since (as anyone who knows him can readily attest) Peter in real life presents a unique combination of bold, larger-than-life adventurism, set alongside a studied and quite thoughtful approach to recounting his many experiences.
The collision of these two seemingly disparate traits lands with good effect in his new memoir. In it, Peter details his close, lifelong engagement with natural history – from an early childhood fascination in the 1950s, to his pioneering of many new frontiers in ecotourism worldwide (mainly in the 1970s-1980s), to more recent pursuits such as co-founding the first bioblitzes alongside E.O. Wilson.
Along the way, his path has been well-supplied with a stream of memorable personal adventures. Some of these (such as his encounter with former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger in observing the Ross’ Gull found in Newburyport, MA in 1971), are legendary in his peer birding community, even though at times he has toned down a few of the more colorful details in print.
During his eco-tourism career, Peter’s positioning has always been along the cutting edge. Like a real-world Zelig, he was present in nearly every venue where new developments in field natural history study were taking place, from Central and South America to Africa, Southeast Asia and Antarctica. His experiences illustrate, in personal terms, a generation of evolving natural history tourism that seldom has received such detailed attention, especially in a discussion this broadly encompassing.
It is particularly interesting to learn (or, in some cases, to recall) the privations facing early neotropical naturalists in the modern era. Without illustrated field guides, Peter often was obliged to create cut-and-paste looseleaf notebooks of species information to support his activities. In illustrating tour lectures (given off-hours to trip participants), he would cart along as many as 5,000+ color slides. Further, in early days, there was little available eco-lodging, poorly developed local transportation options, and few individuals with on-sight observation skills – to say nothing of the absence of the internet, GPS, cell phones, email, PowerPoint, advanced photo optics / sound equipment, and readily available field ID resources.
Peter’s book is designed to appeal to a range of readers.
Continue on this link:
https://www.linnaeannewyork.org/my-wild-life-rare-birds-close-calls-and-adventures-of-an-eco-explorer-a-memoir-review-by-rick-cech/
If you’re a traveler but never thought about the birds at your destination, this book will put the delights of nature into your head.
If there’s a young person you’d like to mentor or spur curiosity in the natural world, share Alden’s book with them. This author writes about his early life as a bird watcher and how he navigated as a self conscious, sometimes embarrassed, young person. But while gaining recognition as a skilled birder and serving as an officer on the Arizona chapter of the National Audubon society during college, his growing knowledge in the field and his competence and leadership were affecting his decisions and shaping his future in the wild places on earth..
If you want to visit those wild places from your armchair or imagine the possibilities of traveling these places anew, Peter Alden’s book will inspire you.
You’ll find his stories amusing and edifying as the anecdotes and adventures unfold before your eyes. The format of the book is inviting, as you can choose by chapter where to go next. You’ll meet the people who influenced him and those whom he influenced, a vibrant community of world travelers and naturalists - from Concord, Arizona, Africa, Asia, north to Alaska and the Arctic and south to the Americas and Antarctica!! No matter where, you’ll experience an amazing adventure. You decide, then explore with a copy of Alden’s My Wild Life!!
I've done my share of traveling to adventurous destinations so when I started to read Peter Alden's memoir, it brought me back. I identified with the amazing wildlife I've seen and what can happen when have a snafu with travel. Peter does a great job of keeping you entertained with this stories. His quest to see birds and exotic animals is contagious and you want to learn more. It's a quick read and fun!